Tuesday, 31 January 2017

I recently finished watching series 2 of the 1980s TV series Robin of
Sherwood. I was overjoyed when I found that all the episodes were available on
ITV Encore, and pretty dejected when, after finishing series 2 which I had
downloaded, I found that none of the series were currently available. So no
Jason Connery.

Watching the first two series did remind me of just how much of my imagination
of the ‘fantastical’ has been shaped by Robin of Sherwood. In fact, I’d say
that the lingering mid-1980s influences on my imagination are Robin of
Sherwood, Fighting Fantasy, and 2000AD. I won’t be able to shake these, ever.

So, Fighting Fantasy and Robin of Sherwood? Why not? I know
that Dragon Warriors is often described as evoking that Robin of Sherwood feel, and dates to the right period of UK gaming. Indeed Legend is a fantastic pseudo-historical medieval game world. But
Dragon Warriors is a class-based system, and worse (for our purposes here) its
classes are not generic ‘roles’ but are fairly specifically fixed in the fiction,
if that makes any sense. In Basic D&D, for example, Fighter can be anything
from a knight, to an outlaw, to a barbarian, to a samurai, etc. Fighter, to
some degree, represents an area of expertise, not a particular profession or
social role. Knight and Barbarian, the Dragon Warriors ‘fighting’ classes,
however, are much more specific, the theme built into them from the start. Yes,
I know that the Player’s Guide includes new classes, specifically Hunter,
Knave, and Priest, which would fill out Robin’s Merry Men very well, but I am
still unsure as to how I feel about the additions in that book – I worry that
it will be for me what Unearthed Arcana is for AD&D grognards.

Anyhow, how would be build Robin’s Merry Men in AFF2e? Let’s
start with a simple one. No, not Much! Little John (as played by Clive Mantle).

When ‘modelling’ a character in AFF2e it is best to work
backwards. Forget SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK for a moment, and start by
considering what this characters Talent(s) will be. What will make them unique:
a Hero rather than an NPC who needs only SKILL and STAMINA as their mechanical
presence.

Of course, Little John would have ‘Strongarm’.

With regard to Special Skills, I’m going to (more or less)
build these characters as if they are starting Heroes. Beginning Heroes in
AFF2e are powerful characters, certainly on a par with an PC from an Expert Set
D&D campaign. So Little John’s Special Skills would look like this:

It occurred to me as I assigned the points to these starting
Special Skills that, were I do develop my pseudo-historical AFF game properly I
would need ‘packages’ of skills representing social class, culture, or
profession. Or maybe two of these, layered on top. What a peasant knows (and
knows how to do) is very different from what a noble knows. While this can be
done by players taking care over their Special Skill choices, this involves
spending more time on character creation, involves asking players to understand
the system a little, and the setting. Better, I feel, to present them with
packages, as Daniel Sell has done in Troika!

The same is true for the ‘racial’ stat ‘bonuses’ – in AFF2e
these each race is given, effectively, an extra point in their basic stats
according to whether a Hero is Human, Dwarf, or Elf. In an all-human game, adding
an extra point to every Hero’s LUCK seems pretty pointless. Where that extra ‘point’
is assigned ought be either a decision for the player, or enforced by a
thematic ‘package’. This extra point could even be an extra Talent in some
cases – after all, the ‘demi-humans’ get a free ‘Dark Seeing’ Talent.

So, I’ve given Little John the Dwarf’s +2 to STAMINA, giving
him a character sheet which looks as so:

You will see that I have simply assigned him appropriate
equipment, and if we did play we would be using the ‘silver standard’. While we’re
on the subject of equipment, I am thinking of adopting the neat little
encumbrance and item retrieval system from Troika! But more on that another
time.

Sunday, 29 January 2017

A brief discussion on G+ got me thinking; what would I have
to do to use the Advanced Fighting Fantasy ‘engine’ for genres other than the high-ish
fantasy of Titan. Obviously, the gamebooks covered lots of ground here, with
sci-fi, post-apocalypse, superheroes, and horror, as well as slightly different
takes on the fantasy of Titan. Sometimes these played straight with the
Fighting Fantasy system, but on other occasions they added in a new mechanic;
FEAR, EVIL, FAITH, HONOUR etc. were all added to provide a mechanic that
stressed a particular theme.

As I thought about it, I felt that a lot could be done
simply by renaming the traditional three statistics. So, for a pulpy game,
rather than SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK, you could have COMPETENCE, GRIT, and
FORTUNE. Of course, you wouldn’t have to rename *any* of these, but by renaming
them you send a particular set of messages to the players (and you remind
yourself) as to the genre expectations.

COMPETENCE I like as it captures what SKILL really means
when it comes to PC Heroes, and disassociates it from Special Skills. It is
easier (for me) to think of COMPETENCE as being something similar to ‘Level’,
with Special Skills representing particular areas of training. It would also
make it easier for me to explain that someone with a Special Skill rating of 4
is much better trained than someone with a Special Skill rating of 1, but that
when it comes down to testing those skills when under fire from a Nazi agent
wielding a tommy gun, well, then COMPETENCE matters.

I like GRIT, not only as it seems genre appropriate, but
because it is easier to narrate the loss of GRIT when being shot at (but not
struck), when missing sleep, or hungry, or when psychologically harmed.

FORTUNE? Well, FORTUNE is only in there as I thought I’d
best change all three, as LUCK seems perfectly fine for a pulp game. However,
as I mused over the possible alternative names for LUCK, I did find the perfect
name for it in a ‘Dark Ages’ themed game: WYRD.

And then there is the fourth stat – the default of which is
MAGIC – which is acts to add mechanical weight to the genre’s themes. A fourth
stat isn’t strictly needed. AFF runs just fine with warrior/rogue type Heroes
with not a point in MAGIC, but the presence of a fourth stat does allow a bit
more variation in point distribution when making PC Heroes. But more than that,
having a fourth box labelled MAGIC, FAITH, SPIRIT, EVIL, CORRUPTION, HONOR,
SANITY, PSYCHIC POWER, etc., produces expectations of a particular type of game
– that in this setting, in this campaign, these are important enough to be
removed from being governed by SKILL, STAMINA, LUCK, Special Skills, and
Director fiat. Rather, these are a source of a power, or weakness, and will
figure in the adventures of these Heroes.

Tuesday, 17 January 2017

With a little idle time, I figured that I’d roll up a Dark
Heresy 1e character and play through the introductory adventure, solo, as some
kind of ‘proof of principle’. And perhaps a ‘rehearsal’ for trying out the game
with my group. As a taster.

And it taught me that my prejudice [1] matched the reality; *for
me*, Dark Heresy is simply too fiddly, it would not work for my players, and I can
no longer imagine having the ‘headspace’ required by this game to do the kind of worldbuilding
on the fly necessary for allowing proper player/character freedom. Also, the introductory
adventure sucks. Well, I didn't play right through it, but the introduction to the introductory adventure sucks.

As I played
the introductory adventure, in the admittedly slightly absurd situation of my
GM-self narrating scenes to my Player-self with his rolled up Cleric ‘Wolfe
Nihilius’, I got very bored. And annoyed. Annoyed because a skill based game
ought not ask for skill tests that are not consequential; it is terrible ‘training’
for a GM.

But this got me thinking. If I couldn't see myself running Dark Heresy, why was that? What do I run? Why do I run those games? What did this bad taste in my mouth tell me about my palette, the tastes that I have acquired over years of gaming. This not to denigrate Dark
Heresy, but ask; what do I look for in an RPG? So, here, in order, as I drank a cup of tea looking at the front cover of Dark Heresy, is what I came up with:

Fast character creation – players should be able
to get into playing pretty quickly. This is usually coupled with pretty straightforward character sheets – if
it can fix on an index card, all the better. This allows replacement PCs to be created quickly, new players to join, and suggests a system in which system mastery is not required. Plus, if I have people coming round to play and RPG, then we want to play that night, not next week. So definitely no ‘session 1 = character creation’!

Fast ‘world’ creation – it should be fairly
straightforward to ‘eyeball’ the necessary stats and mechanics for an NPC, a
monster, or an environmental hazard. If this is possible, a GM can offer all
kinds of choices to the players and their characters.

Simple, straightforward systems to resolve
action, or, even better, a system that ‘permits’ ad hoc resolutions. I know
that no game can ‘refuse’, but if it is in the ‘spirit’ of the game to simply roll
a d6, eyeball a percentage chance, or test an attribute, etc. as and when necessary,
this facilitates fast, intuitive play. As with points 1 and 2, this suggests a system in which the game is in player interaction with the world, not with the system.

Relatively flat character progression – for two
reasons: 1/ I want things that are threatening, powerful, etc. at the start of a game to
remain relevant once the campaign is established, and 2/ I want to be able to
replace PCs which die or 'leave the story', accommodate irregular players, and add new players to the game without too much ‘fudging’.

A game in which setbacks are possible, even expected, as well as advancement; in other words, in which PCs deteriorate as well as improve. Examples of this would be
games with a wound system, games with sanity or corruption systems, and games
in which the expected ‘rhythm’ of adventures means that aging etc. comes into
play. This also includes systems in which it is in keeping with the spirit of
the game for the PCs to (preferably as a consequence of their own decisions) to
lose everything, their magic items, their wealth, their space ship, etc.

A game that eschews fiddly book-keeping. With my
group, this is not much fun, just work. But I do want the resources that matter to matter mechanically. I am increasingly drawn to abstract
resource management systems, so that such considerations are still part of the game, still part of player decision-making, but that it is not a case
of tracking every arrow, torch, coin, and ration.

A system that presents the tools for sandbox
play. For me, these tools come in two forms: 1/ Procedures for handling
player/character-driven (off plot, so to speak) adventuring. Encounter tables,
reaction rolls, and treasure tables are all useful here. 2/ Procedures that allowing the characters to properly interact with the world and - importantly - become more
powerful outside of the personal mechanics of levels, magic items, hit points etc. Here I’m thinking
about faction rules, trading rules, rules for holdings and dominions, etc.

Apologies for all this thinking aloud, reminding myself of what
works for me and what, despite temptation, I ought steer clear.

[1]Why, if these are my prejudices, do I own Dark Heresy?
Hell, I don’t just own Dark Heresy, but the core books for all the games in the
40k RPG line! Because I would like to run a game in a crumbling Gothic science-fantasy
space empire. Just not with these systems.

Wednesday, 11 January 2017

This is not a review. It wouldn’t be fair to review an
adventure that I have not run. This is a
very short piece to note that, by the evidence of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the graphic design standards of Arion’s AFF2e line have come on in
leaps and bounds.

One criticism that has been levelled at AFF2e, and particularly
the core rulebook, is that the design and layout is not up to standard. That there were entirely
blank pages in a couple of places was a particularly egregious example. See,for an example, Dyson Logo’s mini-review. But note what he has to say that is
positive about the game as a game, and remember, I wouldn’t have, in recent years, run more AFF2e
than any other system if I didn’t tremendously enjoy
it.

An aside: In part, this post is inspired by the arrival,
just this morning, of Arion’s republishing of Titan and Out of the Pit. I hadn’t
bought these yet because I already own copies of the originals published by
Puffin. Of course I did. Importantly, I own Titan in the original larger
format, and can confirm that the Arion publication has a layout that is almost
identical to that of the original. Some of the art has ‘faded’, and a couple of
items of ‘page furniture’ have shrunk, but otherwise it is a faithful
reproduction. I suspect the same is the case for Out of the Pit, but I only
have a very battered / well-loved paperback sized version so can’t compare. This
is just to say that the ‘boring’ two column layout is a legacy of the original
books.

Here is a comparison of pages from the Puffin and Arion
publications of Titan:

But this post isn’t about those books, but The Warlock of Firetop
Mountain. I confess that I bought this ages ago. While I have run the Crown of Kings
adventures, I’ve never done more than read The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. But
what did strike me, from when it first arrived, is the way in which the graphic design has
improved immensely, while keeping with the general style. Have a look at a
few pages from the book to see what I mean.

The art from the book is mostly well-reproduced, the ‘page
furniture’ is well done, there are some fantastic page borders, a new map of
the Pagan Plains, and the character portraits for the pre-gens perfectly in
keeping with the Fighting Fantasy aesthetic. I’m not a big fan of the
computer-produced dungeon maps, but that's a personal preference, and they are certainly serviceable.

Congratulations to Graham Bottley, and especially to Brett
Schofield, for ‘translating’ the gamebook into AFF2e and providing some good
quality art that fits in nicely alongside Russ Nicholson’s original
illustrations.

Monday, 2 January 2017

Bank Holiday Monday, I gave my wife some quiet time and headed up to my Mum's with a stack of boardgames (and the girls, who were happy with Matilda on DVD).

Why did I choose Zombies!!!?

From this stack we choose - as my Mum and sister have been binging on series one, two, and three of The Walking Dead - to play Zombies!!! To no great satisfaction. Unlike so many contemporary games, Zombies!!! has the potential to drag on, and on, and on. Perhaps this is an accurate simulation of a zombie apocalypse, as the initial excitement fades into the routine of survival. Or not. In order that no player is eliminated from the game (unlike, say Monopoly, which not only drags, but also leaves so many players spectators as the end game runs on forever), in Zombies!!! a player whose 'shotgun guy' dies simply respawns at the starting point. Which, again, simulates good zombie apocalypse strategies - increasingly distant 'patrols', returning to base when short of resources or needing a rest. Not tremendously fun, though.

Now, I have played in pretty fun games of Zombies!!!, but this isn't the first time that the game has played out in this fashion. So much of Zombies!!! depends on the way in which the map tiles are drawn, and laid out. In this game, quite by accident, we ended up with an almost entirely linear map, meaning that any feeling of exploration was lost, replaced by something that felt more like zombie snakes and ladders. This is made worse as all the buildings containing special items we down one long 'zombie highway', meaning that the weapons and other items that tip the balance in favour of the 'shotgun guys' were very difficult to get, and keep.

Oh, and we also rolled terribly, more than once players lost their 'shotgun guy' from a pretty good, well resourced position after rolling a series of 1s and 2s.

Given that the game ended with all of us barely interested, and quite relieved when my brother announced he was off to the pub to watch West Ham v Man U, well, on this play alone I could only give Zombies!!! one braaaaain out of five.